Fantastical Earring Workshops

Having finished holding Earring Collection events, next on the agenda was the ‘fixing and mending and creating of fantastical earrings from all the donated beads, jewellery and broken pieces workshop’, not a very catchy title! The idea being that all the collected gifts can be hung on the chandelier. 

So a workshop title more simply put, ‘Earring Fun’ bringing out the playful and creative in us all. The participation in this art work has been Key all the way through; the art work doesn’t exist without the donations of earring and peoples stories.

We held workshops, in a ‘Drop-in’ Fashion, at our Studio in Rogue Studios, at the Whitworth Art Gallery and the surreal one at St Mary’s hospital, where the Chandelier will hang in its first home in the courtyard.

The pictures are from workshops and also showing sets or collections of earrings, we wanted to get our heads around all the different types of earrings donated, before we start the construct the chandelier proper.

 

Surreal workshops  - or where a workshop should and shouldn’t be held, a lesson learnt.

In St Marys hospital the main women’s and maternity unit, and where the concept of the chandelier began, we were to hold a drop in session for staff over a three hour period around lunch time.

We were set up in a teaching room, on the 2^nd floor, maternity wards, with weird and wonderful hospital paraphernalia around us; a hospital bed, a plastic model birthing canal and lots and lots of glitzy jewels (that’s us).

We didn’t expect a fast crowd of people to run in, hospital staff are busy people......but it was devoid of sound, people, crying babies or even footsteps........like we had entered a different time zone... finally one man walked past.....twice,  probably thinking , ‘did I really just see a jewellery factory shop?” He didn’t come in.

So lesson learnt, we should have taken a tip from the TV show ‘Location, Location, Location’. Although it was advertised, and we know staff and nurses were interested, we had chatted to them about it at the collection events; we were not in a main thoroughfare or on the way to anywhere, as the expression goes ‘out of sight, out of mind! But fortunately we worked, made up lots of single earrings and had a laugh making up stories of where everyone had gone.

Flower Collections

Heart Collections

Sparkling Collections

Pear Drop threaded Collections

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